EA SPORTS: FEEL NEXT LEVEL
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
We were poised to do our biggest EA Sports spot ever, but in a far-off corner of the world a little-known virus was starting make headlines.
Surely that wouldn’t affect a five-day live-action shoot right? RIGHT?
EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW ABOUT this PROJECT.
You mentioned EA, can you tell us a bit about The Mill’s involvement in EA SPORTS ‘Feel Next Level’?
We created the whole project from start to finish. I wrote the creative concept, the scripts and the visual ideas. Then we brought it to life through The Mill’s amazing production arm under the direction of our very own Carl Addy. Production plugged seamlessly into the Design and VFX teams who built every shot. It then went through an intensive finishing process, including being graded by Mill colourist Thomas Mangham. There was a global pandemic somewhere in the middle of the project, but we didn’t let it slow us down too much.
What was the brief from EA SPORTS and how did you go about bringing it to life?
EA SPORTS came to us at the beginning of the year with a marketing brief based around the concept of FEEL — a strategic proposition designed to express a range of technical advancements that made their 21 titles super-immersive. Our job was to create a film that brought this concept to life. I wrote and pitched four different creative routes and we eventually narrowed that down to one — a kind of stylised documentary film where people spoke frankly about the ‘feeling’ of football. It had a big cast, a ton of locations and was scheduled to play out over a week of shoot days. And then covid happened so none of that was possible. Over the course of a week I rewrote everything, adapting the existing concept to a new approach that used 3D, motion graphics, typography and archive footage in place of live-action. We re-pitched it to EA SPORTS and they trusted us to take it forward. That was a crazy week.
Did you find that having previously worked with the client before helped the creative process?
When disaster struck, the closeness of our relationship saved that job. We had to reinvent a big, vital project at breakneck speed, and a strong understanding of the brand, the team and their creative vision was essential to making that happen. We were lucky enough to visit the EA SPORTS campus in Vancouver last year, and I found that an invaluable experience in terms of understanding the guys, their production processes and the broader company culture.
What are the benefits of working on a project that’s all in-house?
It definitely allows you to be adaptable. If you need to respond to a global crisis (or even just a change in brief), you can do that quickly and efficiently, as one unit. It also creates a shorter line between brief and execution, which allows us to deliver a really faithful expression of the core creative idea. This is especially true when you’re working in a small team and everyone is pushing hard in the same direction. But the flip-side of that coin is responsibility. We’re 100% responsible for the success of these projects. And that’s something we take really seriously.
